Weird Nature The World's Most Violent Plants

The world's most violent plants won't just kill the random fly that lands in the wrong place in the jungle - they'll also kill you, your family, and your pets, if touched or ingested. From the pitcher plants that can drown a rodent without breaking a sweat to those that can be ground up and snuck in your soup or sugar packet leaving you with some really unpleasant hours before your death, these plants are not to be messed with.

Violent plants come in two forms: those that actively kill prey and those that can be used to kill if the situation is right. In the first category, the carnivorous plants survive by trapping their next meal, be it a tadpole, like the common bladderwort, a small rodent, like the giant pitcher plant, or just an insect, like the Venus fly trap.

In the second category, poisonous plants, the ones that could easily be slipped into your food or eaten by an animal you then eat, are much more common than many of us want to believe. Between the caster oil plant, which produces the highly toxic ricin, to oleander, which will put you in a coma before you know it (and is probably growing somewhere in your neighborhood!), these plants prove that they don't need bladders or traps to be terribly violent.

So the next time you see your dog sniffing through the neighbor's garden or see your kid bring you the most beautiful flower you've ever seen, keep in mind that these gorgeous plants might just be one of the world's most violent plants.

Photo: via Reddit

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Hippomane Mancinella - Little Apple of Death

Though this killer plant doesn't have any scary traps or mechanisms to ensnare prey, it will, quite easily, kill you, just for coming close to it. Brush up against this beast, and you will enjoy a horrible allergic skin infection. Ingest one of the delicious little apples ("manzanillas"), and you can find yourself the proud new owner of nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and seizures - if one of the tree's many toxins don't kill you first.

Brugmansia - Angel's Trumpets

Available in a variety of colors, in case you have a favorite color to honor en route to becoming a zombie, the angel's trumpets flower is as pretty as it is likely to make you go absolutely insane. Whether you eat the seeds, leaves, or pretty downward-facing trumpet flowers, this beast, ripe with various toxins, will cause confusion, diarrhea, hallucinations, a complete disconnect from reality, amnesia, and eventually death. Though sometimes used recreationally, in one instance, some poor misguided guy amputated a few of his own body parts (tongue and penis included!) after just one cup of Brugmansia tea. Don't do drugs, kids.

Utricularia Macrorhiza - Common Bladderwort

Native to North America and Eastern Asia, the Utricularia macrorhiza or common bladderwort, survives on a balanced diet of tadpoles and crustaceans, both of which it murders as they are passing by in the water. The plant features a bunch of submerged bladders that can detect the motion of a nearby meal, then grab said prey to capture it and suffocate it inside the bladder. Definitely not the best way to die, if you're a tadpole.

Nerium Oleander - Oleander Flower

You know those gorgeous pink flowers that your neighborhood green-thumb grows? For the love of god, don't eat them or let your animals eat them! This common garden beauty contains a handful of toxins that can cause nausea, a racing heart rate, excess salivation, poor circulation, seizures, coma, and death in both animals and humans. Basically, eat these pretty flowers, and your body self-destructs.